The Jerry Garcia Band was a San Francisco Bay Area rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Garcia founded the band in 1975; it remained the most important of his various side-projects until his death in 1995. "The Garcia Band," as it was often referred to by the fans, toured and recorded sporadically throughout its twenty-year existence, often during times when the Grateful Dead was not touring, but also, sometimes overlapping tours during the same periods.